The significance of getting tattooed in my 30s

'It'll be heroin next', said my dad

I’ve just booked in for my third tattoo within 5 months. I got my first two last November, both done on the same day despite being strongly advised to do one at a time. I’m far too impulsive these days for that. I’ve some catching up to do on living. ‘Go big or go home’, I say, although I have been known to just go home. I never thought I’d be a tattoo type of person, but that’s because growing up, I never saw any delicate, pretty feminine tattoos. I associated tattoos with felons and those who’d had one too many whiskey buckets in Thailand, only to wake up the next morning with some arbitrary Chinese symbol taking pride of place above their crack. 

Thanks to Pinterest and Hailey Bieber, my perception of who could pull off a tattoo and what a tattoo might look like changed. I became interested. I wanted one. I wanted a few and I wanted them now! At first, I felt pressure to come across something meaningful - everyone wants a story behind their body art, not just ‘Well I saw it on Pinterest and thought it looked nice’ - but, it turns out, the real significance for me is not so much the design but the act of doing it in the first place. 

I told my parents about my plan to get some tattoos. My mother said, “Good for you!”. My dad said: "you'll never get a job if you’re covered in tattoos!” and “I suppose it will be heroin next?” At almost 36, with a husband, a child, a reliable income and a mortgage, I decided it was time to rebel.